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Keep family photos safe: a six-step digital backup guide

Collect photos across devices, make copies in separate places, and test access regularly.

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A lost phone or failed memory card can take precious images with it. This guide adapts the Library of Congress personal photo-archiving advice. Synchronization alone is not necessarily a recoverable backup.

Your try-it-at-home checklist

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1. Inventory photos on phones, cameras, computers, memory cards and online albums.
2. Select images worth preserving and retain the highest-quality original versions. Do not delete files before identifying your keepers.
3. Sort them into folders by year or event with understandable names; preserve original date and other metadata where practical.
4. Besides the main computer copy, make at least one independent copy on an external drive or a trusted online storage service.
5. Keep a copy in a different physical location, rather than all in one home; review cloud-account access and privacy settings.
6. At least yearly, open sample files and test recovery. Move copies to newer media as storage ages and check that accidentally deleted photos can actually be restored.

Your try-it-at-home checklist

Further reading

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